In the 20th century, textiles have often been considered lesser—as applied art, women’s work, or domestic craft. Woven Histories challenges the hierarchies that often separate textiles from fine arts. Putting into dialogue some 160 works by more than 50 creators from across generations and continents, the exhibition explores the contributions of weaving and related techniques to abstraction, modernism’s preeminent art form.  

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction foregrounds a robust if over-looked strand in art history’s modernist narratives by tracing how, when, and why abstract art intersected with woven textiles (and such pre-loom technologies as basketry, knotting, and netting) over the past century. 

Ellen Lesperance’s exhibition “Amazonknights” presents a selection of new and existing paintings and two new sculptures that pay homage to feminist activism. Inspired by actions of protest that have shaped the twentieth century, the artist plumbs historical footage and photographs, sourcing images of protesters’ hand-knitted garments and translating them into paintings and sculptures. Citing inspiration from Bauhaus-era female weavers, the Pattern and Decoration movement, and feminist art of the 1970s and 1980s centered around the female body, Lesperance reframes image-making outside of male-dominated Western painting traditions while honoring the creative labor of women standing up against social and political ills and environmental destruction.

“Ellen Lesperance: Amazonknights” is organized by ICA Miami and curated by Stephanie Seidel, Curator.

Collectivity explores artists’ use of diverse materials and techniques to activate a sense of community. Highlights include Beatriz Gonzalez’s Mutis por el foro, a metal bedframe depicting the death of Simón Bolivar; the work of Ellen Lesperance, who addresses the aesthetics of protest; Teresa Margolles’s Lote bravo, comprising 400 adobe bricks made by hand out of the soil where murdered women had been buried in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; the vibrant lithographs of Wendy Red Star; and the Kitchen Table Series of photographs by Carrie Mae Weems.

Ellen Lesperance's work is included in The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition draws examples from the Museum's contemporary art collection to contemplate the profound disruption that occurred in 2020. Borrowing its title from an aeronautical term that refers to the pull of the current that is left in the wake of a large and powerful object, the exhibition examines the placement and displacement of power that runs through American history and continues today. In 2020's slipstream, the confluence of the devastating effects of the pandemic, civil unrest across the United States, a contested presidential election, and unchecked climate change will continue to shape conversations about the state of the nation and world. The exhibition seeks to hold space for individuals to find their feelings of fear, grief, vulnerability, anger, isolation, and despair—as well as joy, determination, and love—reflected in art.
 

Centering artists of color, The Slipstream features works by multiple generations of artists from the 1960s to the present day. More than sixty artworks are on view, organized in seven sections around themes such as collective power, family ties, spiritual well-being, relationships to nature, and the simple rituals of daily life. Each of these works embodies strategies for staying grounded, gathering strength, and considering paths into the future.

Ellen Lesperance will be included in Who What When Where at the Everson Museum of Art.

Based upon the iconic Carrie Mae Weems’ 1998 work of the same name, Who What When Where explores questions of identity, place, and time while investigating the four words fundamental to the construction of narratives.

Ellen Lesperance will be included in We’ve Only Just Begun: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond at The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. The exhibition takes the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment as the occasion for reflection and exploration of the issues and challenges women in the United States have faced, and continue to face, in politics and society.

"Yesterday's Tomorrow" features works from the Rose's collection from 1933 to 2018. More than half of the works on view are new gifts and recent acquisitions that have never before been exhibited within a Rose exhibition, including artworks by Nicole Eisenman, Joy Episalla, Ulrich Horndash, Ellen Lesperance, Patti Smith, William Villalongo, and Jack Whitten.
 

Ellen Lesperance will be included in a two-person exhibition, Dress Codes: Ellen Lesperance and Diane Simpson, at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, MA. The exhibition will be on view from September 21, 2019 through January 5, 2020. 

For more information, visit www.fryemuseum.org. 

Ellen Lesperance will be included in Feminist Histories: Artists After 2000 at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art, Sao Paulo, Brazil. On view from August 23 through November 17, 2019, the exhibition will be organized around themes, where works of different medium will tackle the history of women and feminisms and the state and future of contemporary feminism. 

Fore more information, visit www.masp.org.br.

Ellen Lesperance will be included in Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design at ICA Boston, an exhibition that focuses on works across medium that favor decoration, pattern and maximalism. It will be on view from June 26 through September 22, 2019. 

Fore more information, visit www.icaboston.org. 

Ellen Lesperance will be included in the second edition of the Honolulu Biennial, titled "To Make Wrong / Right / Now". The Biennial will be held from March 8 to May 5, 2019 and will bring together 19 artists and artists groups from Hawaii and 29 artists and artist group from the Pacific and Asia. 

For more information, please visit www.honolulubiennial.org. 

Ellen Lesperance is included in Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender and Resistance, on view at Nottingham Contemporary, Notthingham, UK through January 27, 2019. This exhibition explores the role that women have played in the history of resistance movements and alternative forms of living and will travel to De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK in February - June 2019. 

For more information, please visit www.notthinghamcontemporary.org. 

Ellen Lesperance is included in Nashashibi/Skaer: Thinking Through Other Artists, on view at the Tate St Ives in Cornwall, UK, until January 6, 2019. This exhibition combines films made by Rosalinf Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer with their personal selection of historic and contemporary art that reflects on and adds new meaning to their work.

For more information, please visit www.tate.org.uk. 

Ellen Lesperance is included in New Materialism, on view at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden through November 11, 2018. This group exhibition gathers 13 artists who work withing textile, wood, clay and ceramics, paying attention to the increading interest in crafts as a material and method within the contemporary art field. 

For more information, please visit www.bonnierskonsthall.se. 

Ellen Lesperance is included in Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, on view through March 31, 2019. Featuring more than 100 works from the Museum's collection, the exhibition explores a wide range of art-making, focusing on enduring political subjects - encompassing gender, race and class - that remain relevant today. 

For more information, please visit www.brooklynmuseum.org.